Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Nedoceratops - A Full Description at Last

Every group of animals has at least one notable yet neglected specimen. In horned dinosaurs, a particular example is a large skull at the Smithsonian discovered in Wyoming during the closing years of the 19th century. Unfortunately, this specimen has suffered a twisted and sometimes tragic history.

The skull of Nedoceratops hatcheri, modified from Farke 2011

The collector of the fossil, John Bell Hatcher, wrote a paper about the specimen, but died before he could publish it. So, the task fell upon Yale's Richard Lull, who gave this nearly complete skull the name of Diceratops hatcheri. It looked much like a Triceratops (the famous three-horned face), but differed from the standard "Trike" in having a tiny nose horn, several holes in the frill, and a handful of other characteristics. Later on, other scientists decided that these differences were probably just the result of individual variation, injury, or other illness. So, Diceratops became just another Triceratops to most workers (a 1986 paper by John Ostrom and Peter Wellnhofer was influential in this regard). Still, there wasn't unanimity in that thought - Cathy Forster, for one, published the opinion (in 1996) that Diceratops was indeed distinct from Triceratops.

In 2000, the skull (which was on exhibit at the Smithsonian) was damaged when some rowdy museum visitors crashed through a barricade and broke the snout. Fortunately, the museum's preparators were able to fix it. As if to add insult to injury, it turned out that the name Diceratops wasn't unique. A German entomologist (coincidentally named Förster) had applied the name to an insect way back in 1868, so a new name had to be found for the dinosaur. Unfortunately, this didn't happen in the most organized way. Two researchers independently published the replacement names of Diceratus (in 2008) and Nedoceratops (in 2007). The second one, although less elegant (in my opinion), had priority because it was published first.

But wait - there's more! The story of Nedoceratops took an interesting twist last year, when John Scannella and Jack Horner suggested that it represented a life stage of Triceratops, halfway through its transformation into Torosaurus (see the figure below). This was not an evolutionary transformation, of course, but ontogenetic (one that happened as an individual animal got older). So, our three animals - Triceratops, Nedoceratops, and Torosaurus - were all just the same thing! Such revelations happen frequently in paleontology. For instance, the duck-billed dinosaur Procheneosaurus turned out to be young Corythosaurus, Lambeosaurus, Hypacrosaurus, and the like. But, not all horned dinosaur experts are convinced that this was what was going on with Nedoceratops and Torosaurus.

From left, life restorations of Triceratops, Nedoceratops, and Torosaurus (all modified afteroriginalsby Nobu Tamura). The arrows indicate the relative age of each animal, as proposed by Scannella and Horner. If they all are the same thing, Triceratops is the "young" life stage, and Torosaurus is the "old" life stage, with Nedoceratops being a transitional form. The big question: are these the same animal, or different species?

Named, renamed, renamed again, broken, pieced together, and declared invalid, Nedoceratops has had a checkered past. Yet, the skull has never received a fair treatment in the scientific literature. I'm not just talking about people's opinions of the specimen. Instead, I'm talking about a full description.

Descriptions - detailed accounts of a specimen's characteristics - are the data upon which much of paleontology relies. But, the skull of Nedoceratops was never fully described. A few paragraphs have been written about it here or there, but it turns out that many aspects of these were inaccurate or incomplete. Given the controversy over this skull, an accurate and complete description of the animal was particularly important. So, I set out to fix the situation. In my recent PLoS ONE paper, I published the first comprehensive description and illustration of Nedoceratops hatcheri.

At risk of boring you readers with endless details, I'll just mention a few minor points. For instance, it turns out that many of the early drawings of the specimen were inaccurate (missing bone was shown as present, for instance). I was able to correct these errors, and talk about areas of the skull that were well-preserved but never discussed in the literature before. My paper also includes detailed and never-before-published photographs of the skull in various views, which I hope will be useful for folks who can't see the skull first-hand.

Finally, and probably of the broadest interest, I go out on a limb and say that Nedoceratops hatcheri is a unique species - not the same as Triceratops or Torosaurus. In my opinion (and it is but an opinion), there are just too many features that are different between these animals, and few features can be chalked up to injury or growth changes. Will this opinion stand the test of time? Maybe, maybe not. My opinion on the validity of Nedoceratops is probably the most tentative conclusion I've ever published, so my feelings won't be terribly hurt if I turn out to be wrong (although of course, I'd rather be right).

And what about the idea of Triceratops being a junior version of Torosaurus? I argue that Torosaurus and Triceratops are indeed distinct species, not just old and young versions of the same animal. Why is this?

Triceratops and Torosaurus have vastly different numbers of bony bumps - called epiparietals and episquamosals - on the edges of their frills. If Torosaurus is the younger version of Triceratops, this means that Triceratops added a bunch of these bumps to the frill during growth. Yet, there is no good evidence that any other horned dinosaur did this.

Triceratops has a solid frill, and Torosaurus has big holes in its frill. In all other horned dinosaurs we know (such as Protoceratops and Centrosaurus), if adults have holes, the young ones have holes. Thus, it doesn't make a lot of sense that Triceratops/Torosaurus would only add these holes when it got really big. [of course, I will admit that just because something doesn't make sense doesn't mean it couldn't happen - just that it is much less likely]

It was previously claimed that there were no good examples of "young" Torosaurus. But, a skull at Yale (collected by Hatcher, the same person who discovered the Nedoceratops skull) fits all of the characteristics of a young animal. Its skull sutures are all open, or unfused, and the bone has a smooth texture typical of young dinosaurs. In my mind, this is probably the best evidence that Torosaurus is not a grown-up Triceratops.

Undoubtedly, many other paleontologists will have something to say about these issues. Some will agree, some will disagree, some will show parts of my paper are incorrect, and others will present more supporting data (at least I hope, on all counts). I suspect the next few years will feature much, much more discussion on these fascinating horned dinosaurs!

Coming Up: It is safe to say that I have had more fun with this project than with anything else I've done recently. Why is that? In part, it's been due to some very stimulating discussions with John Scannella and Jack Horner, who recently published the "Toroceratops" hypothesis. See my next post for more!

Thanks, Zach. Nick Longrich had a very brief comment about this topic in his posted-but-unpublished manuscript on the animal from New Mexico, so he's probably officially "firsties" just in that regard. But, I think I'm the first to present an in-depth critique. And really, most of the points I raised in the paper had already been discussed in Q&A sessions at meetings, hallway talks, and over beverages. The paper is just a formality!

Right on. Well, as I've said before on my blog, you can have all the information in the world in your head, but until it's published for your colleagues to see, it may as well not exist. I'm sure a lot of your colleagues saw similar problems, while others are more on the side of Toroceratops. But either way, now there is a paper (and data) to cite in future research.

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Ramblings on the role of open source software and open access publishing in paleontology, the latest and sometimes not-so-greatest ways in which we reconstruct the past, and the occasional bits of career advice and paleo news.

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This is a personal weblog, and the opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer or any other organization with which I am associated. Although I strive for accurate information, please be aware that the advice offered here is "as is," with no claims or guarantees that it will work for you. Hey, I'm just a paleontologist.